OpenSSL 0.9.8 with VC++ Express 2005 - Openssl

This is a discussion on OpenSSL 0.9.8 with VC++ Express 2005 - Openssl ; I have just spent the last several days trying to figure out how to
get OpenSSL 0.9.8 compiled with the C++ Visual Studio Express 2005. My
problem, however, is not the warnings presented by the last person who
brought this ...

OpenSSL 0.9.8 with VC++ Express 2005

I have just spent the last several days trying to figure out how to
get OpenSSL 0.9.8 compiled with the C++ Visual Studio Express 2005. My
problem, however, is not the warnings presented by the last person who
brought this up. I have done my homework and had downloaded the
2005/12/26 snapshot for the 0.9.8 branch. When I ran ms\do_nasm.bat,
however, the process stalled on

perl util\mkdef.pl 32 libeay 1>ms\libeay32.def

Wanting to try to figure this out, I downloaded the repository via
CVS, got ticked off at CVS's apparent inability to do a combined
branch/date checkout, converted the repository to SVN, and promptly
figured out that yes, changes *have* been made to mkdef.pl and its
input, but I'm so far out of touch with my Perl and have little
knowledge of the code involved to be able to figure out where things
broke.

When I turned the debug output on last (a few days ago), it looked
like something was caught in an infinite loop. Trying this morning's
stable snapshot (2006/01/02), it still freezes on the mkdef.pl line. I
kept it running as I joined this and the other OpenSSL lists to see if
I can get it working. I just canceled (Ctrl-C) and got:

Can't coerce UNKNOWN to string in subst at util\mkdef.pl line 854.

The result of perl -v is:
This is perl, v5.8.7 built for MSWin32-x86-multi-thread
(with 14 registered patches, see perl -V for more detail)

Obviously, something has happened to the file(s) involved and I really
don't know enough about the build process for OpenSSL to figure it
out. I'm trying to get OpenSSL built with VC++ 2005 as part of a
larger project to build Ruby 1.8.4 with VC++ 2005 and all of the
extensions provided by the Windows Installer Project on RubyForge.